On Monday 10 September, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani decided that from Tuesday 11 September sanctions would be applied to the seven MEPs who disrupted the smooth running of the plenary session's work in early July as a sign of their support for the Parliament's striking interpreters (see EUROPE 12054).
Georges Bach (EPP, Luxembourg), Claude Rolin (EPP, Belgium), Isabelle Thomas, and Guillaume Balas (both S&D, France), Marie Arena (S&D, Belgium) and José Bové (Greens/EFA, France) have thus been excluded from all parliamentary work for five days, while Edouard Martin (S&D, France) has been excluded for eight days because it was he who physically cut the transmissions in the interpreters' sound control booth.
"We have just been excluded from the hemicycle on the orders of Mr Tajani. We no longer have the right to participate in parliamentary work for a week, nor to represent the European Parliament in different meetings", Martin tweeted in a video posted on Twitter. He added: "What are our crimes? To have defended the interpreters' right to strike before the summer. It is the right to strike, written into the international texts on labour law, that Mr Tajani is violating and trampling over (...) By adopting this sanction, he is sending the following message: the law applies to all outside the institutions, but not to where I work at the European Parliament!"
The European Parliament interpreters' conflict came to a positive end in mid-July, which enabled the entry into force, in September, of new working conditions agreed by common accord between the representatives of the interpreters and Parliament (see EUROPE 12063). (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)